


Together

by DemonDeepFried



Category: X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men Evolution, X-Men: The Animated Series
Genre: Angst, Anorexia, Boys Kissing, Eating Disorders, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, High School, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-07
Updated: 2015-10-07
Packaged: 2018-04-25 07:44:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4952215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemonDeepFried/pseuds/DemonDeepFried
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Evan knows he should hate Pietro, knows they should be mortal enemies but when he starts noticing the tell-tale signs of something he's seen before, he can't leave his oldest friend to cope with this alone. It doesn't matter what it takes, just that he can help Pietro get through this. <br/>Lots of hurt/comfort and angst, but also heaps of fluff and loveliness :)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Together

**Author's Note:**

> So I binge-watched the entire show recently and couldn't help but fall for this pairing. I've read a heap of fanfic like this but thought it needed something more so here's an anorexic Pietro who needs his old friend back again.
> 
> Enjoy and review!

Evan and Pietro had been best friends since either of them could remember. It seemed as though they had shared everything together, from basketball trials to secrets whispered in the dark.

Evan Daniels prided himself on the fact that he had always been by his friend's side and had always been there for Pietro. He knew that Pietro had forever done the same for him. Every problem, mishap, question and tear was halved between them; there was nothing that they couldn't handle together.

But when emotions were at a high and the pair of them were faced with the X-Men vs. the Brotherhood, Evan's aunt vs. Pietro's father, the riptide that dragged them away from each other was something they couldn't stop.

Exhaling a deep breath, Evan twirled a golden chip between two fingers as he frowned at his lunch plate.

"Hey, like, what's bumming you out, Evan?" Kitty asked, nudging him with her elbow as she peered up into his shadowed face.

Cramming the chip into his mouth, he shrugged and muttered, "Nothing," around his mouthful. In truth, he was feeling crappy because Pietro had shot a snide comment at him in English.

It hurt more than it should.

"Have you seen Lance, by the way," she carried on- because apparently she'd been talking the whole time-, "seriously, look at him." She grabbed Evan's chin and turned it roughly to look over at the Brotherhood table. (It was widely known that the table in the furthest corner in the cafeteria- the one with all the graffiti- was the Brotherhood Table. Even when none of them were at school, it was a death sentence to so much as knock over one of the chairs or spill a little milk on it.)

"What?" grumbled Evan, struggling under her surprisingly tight grip. "What is it, Kitty?"

When he finally relented with a heavy sigh, he looked over towards the Brotherhood Table and saw Pietro sat there playing with his food with long, slender, milky white fingers. His usual long-sleeved dark maroon t-shirt still fit snugly on his lean muscle, but Evan couldn't help but notice that it fit a little baggier than it should. Come to think of it, his tightly fit denim jeans were done up slightly tighter around the belt as well.

His silvery blond hair looked a little ragged, as though Pietro had rushed through his morning routine of brushing it- which struck Evan as odd, and a little deja vu, since Pietro normally took so much effort into making it look perfect.

The dark-skinned blond frowned to himself.

Something was wrong with Pietro.

"Are you even listening to me?" Kitty snapped, bringing Evan back to reality.

"What?" he grunted, looking back at her, "Sorry, what were you saying?"

She rolled her eyes but repeated herself, "I _said_ , 'Lance hasn't washed his jacket since I accidentally spilled that hot chocolate on it.' I can see the stain on the left rim by the zip. Do you think he's trying to, like, tell me something? Maybe he wants to get back together and he's trying to give me a, like, a signal! You know?"

"No, I don't know," he mumbled, gaze transfixed on Pietro, who was still just pushing around the food on a full plate with the end of his fork. "Look, Kit, the Brotherhood House probably doesn't even have a washing machine, and I can't honestly see any of them doing their own laundry. So Alvers probably just hasn't cleaned it because he can't."

Pursing her lips, Kitty harrumphed.

There was definitely something up with Pietro, he decided. _But what was it?_ It couldn't be girl trouble, because Pietro Maximoff didn't have girl trouble. Maybe he was failing one of his classes; but no, Pietro was doing well in every class as usual.

Grumbling to himself, Evan tried to push the worry to the back of his mind because no matter what Pietro and he had had it wasn't there anymore and he was supposed to _hate_ his rival.

Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, Evan turned right back round to the table and shoved another handful of chips into his mouth while Kitty blabbed endlessly about Lance.

It was probably nothing.

* * *

That afternoon, Evan and Pietro shared a PE class and today they were both taken aside along with the rest of the basketball team to practice for the upcoming game. As ever, the two blonds were competing with each other and it was already annoying the rest of the team.

"Maximoff!" one of them shouted. "Just pass the ball to Daniels!"

"Fuck off!" Pietro yelled back, dodging around one of the opposing team and shooting the ball at the hoop from where he stood. It missed quite extravagantly.

Evan smugly took the ball off him and proceeded to dribble it back down to the other end of the court. He avoided any tackles and managed to get the ball safely to the other end of the court, before shooting it at the hoop and scoring his team some points.

His team cheered but he spied Pietro leaning heavily against the basketball hoop stand on the other side of the court. He didn’t look angry that Evan had scored where he had missed however, he looked _worn out_.

Evan frowned.

Pietro looked tired, as though one more jog up the court would have him on his knees. But that couldn’t be right because Pietro was always energetic and always up for another three laps of the track.

“Daniels!” the coach roared from the bleachers. “What are you standing there for? Throw the damn ball!”

“Right, sorry,” he mumbled as he passed the ball to another of his teammates and watched as they approached Pietro on the other side of the court.

The almost frail looking blond caught sight of the ball and dived instinctively forward, managing to snatch the ball out of the opposition’s hands and lob it across the court. Still focussed solely on Pietro, Evan saw as he stumbled clumsily from the force of the throw. His attention so engrossed, Evan nearly missed the ball that was fast coming down to his head. With a quick movement, he grabbed it from the air, spun on his heel and leapt into the air to slam it into the hoop.

With the final shoot, the coach blew his whistle shrilly and the team made its way into the changing rooms.

Jogging over to his bag, Evan tore off his sweaty kit and decided to go for a quick shower to cool off. On his way over to the showers, he spotted Pietro in his usual corner. He was half way through putting his clean t-shirt back on and Evan caught sight of his old friend’s chest and torso.

He barely stifled a small gasp.

Prominent angular bones jutted out where they shouldn’t through under Pietro’s skin: Evan could have counted every one of his ribs and his hipbone was protruding just over where his shorts hung off him. There was barely an ounce of fat on the boy.

Evan remembered with a sharp twinge of misery where he had seen Pietro like this once before. Not two years ago when were both starting high school, Pietro had been exercising on the track maybe three times a day- Evan never saw him but he knew that when Pietro trained, he didn’t do it half-heartedly. When he’d cornered Pietro in the changing rooms one day about how he’d been skipping meals, Evan had noticed the same bones too prominent against the blond’s milky white skin.

Back then, they had been friends enough to get through it together.

But now, Evan didn’t know what to do.

He was frozen in his stride, watching Pietro put his t-shirt back on with shaky hands, before removing his shorts- revealing thigh bones that shouldn’t be seen from the surface- and replacing them with his jeans. Long, slender white fingers raked themselves through Pietro’s snowy hair and then Pietro was resting his forehead against the wall as though he was exhausted under all the weight in the world.

The urge to run up to him and embrace him tightly in a hug that said everything would be alright was nearly overwhelming and it took Evan all he had to stop himself, because _they weren’t friends anymore. They were supposed to hate each other_.

Pietro’s shoulders shook a little and when he turned around to haul his bag onto his shoulder and leave, Evan spied moisture dampening his eyelashes.

“Pietro, wait-!” he tried to call, but in a blink, the speedster was gone. “Shit.”

* * *

“Hey, Evan, you vant to join us in a game outside?” Kurt asked him that evening.

Evan was slouched deep in the armchair of Xavier’s front room, watching the TV without processing it. “I’ll pass,” he mumbled to the teleporter.

“Oh, come on, Evan,” Bobby pressed, poking him in the ribs with his surprisingly sharp elbow. “We’re playing basketball! You love playing basketball!”

“I’ll pass,” the blond repeated, hauling himself off the sofa and retreating to his room. He jogged up the stairs and soon came to his bedroom door down the corridor. Flinging the door open, Evan slumped inside and sat himself down on his desk chair, pulling his laptop towards him as he did. Booting the new computer up, he waited until it blinked blearily at him before opening up the internet, but he paused as his fingers hovered over the keyboard.

Was this really right?

Closing his eyes for half a second, the image of Pietro’s shrunken body and shaking fingers and damp eyes came back to mind with a sting and he had typed his request into Google before he could think twice.

It came back with almost all of the same results as it had done the last time he searched it. Although the last time he’d searched it had been on his computer back in New York, with Pietro leaning over his shoulder and snorting at the pictures of skeletal models, muttering, ‘I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,’ to himself.

This time, Evan was alone.

He closed his eyes to the endless images of young girls with protruding bones and went straight to the same website he had before. Here, it listed all of the symptoms and causes. But, like before, it didn’t explain how to stop it.

Growling, Evan slammed his laptop shut after another five minutes of searching and folded his arms with a grumble.

He and Pietro had managed to stop it before, but he couldn’t remember how.

Rubbing his tired eyes with the pads of his fingers, Evan flopped out of his chair and settled for an early night, succumbing to the torrent of dreams plagued by the haunting image of Pietro’s ghostly white skin stretched taut over angular juts of too visible bone.

* * *

The following morning was a miserable day. It was raining heavily outside, the clouds were shaded over as though an artist had scribbled them with too much pressure; the atmosphere seemed to echo the grey day and it wasn’t just Evan slumping around the corridors as though he’d carried a cloud in with him and was submerged under it.

His very first period was track outside.

Fucking brilliant.

Making his way through the tight-knit throng of people battling their way to their classes, Evan made a sharp left and came into the boys’ changing rooms. Here, he hung his PE bag on a peg and started getting changed. He was so attentive to his actions that he missed Pietro walking in and getting changed quickly in his usual corner.

Ten minutes later, they were all outside and shivering as they warmed up by the track.

“Right, boys,” the coach bellowed through the pounding of the rain. “We’re going for stamina today. I want every one of you to have completed five laps of this track by the end of the lesson without stopping or slowing to a walk once.”

There was an uproar of protests. “But, Sir! That’s longer than 1500m!”

“That’s right,” the coach smirked. “Cross country season, boys. Now get running! You’ve already lost five minutes arguing! If you don’t complete the course by the end of the lesson, you’ll be finishing it at lunch.”

With multiple groans, the fifteen boys set about getting into their respectable places on the track. At the coach’s shout, they started running.

“This is ridiculous,” one of the boy’s on Evan’s right grumbled. “The only person who’s ever been able to do this kind of distance in that time is Maximoff, but he’s a mental runner.”

That reminded Evan of Pietro, and his head shot up straighter to try and make out Pietro’s form in the distance ahead of him- which was shadowed over in clouds and pummelling rain. He couldn’t see him. But that wasn’t odd, Pietro was probably almost finishing his first lap. It wasn’t uncommon to see Pietro heading into the showers twenty minutes before the rest of the class finished the course.

But something didn’t feel right.

The boys either side of him were muttering more heatedly and a couple of them were shooting quick looks of surprise behind them.

Evan turned his head to peer curiously over his shoulder and was shocked to see Pietro lagging behind the rest of the class.

Apparently everyone else was just as shocked as he was.

However, there was nothing he could do right now; he would keep running until he’d finished his laps and then take Pietro aside and confront him. The class was rounding the third curve and some of the less fit ones were starting to take shorter strides. A quick check behind him showed that Pietro was lagging even further behind.

When they reached the starting line again, Evan thought he heard a rather loud thump of rain hit the track and vaguely wondered whether the storm would get even heavier. All of the boys were already soaked through and caught between a bodily desire to sweat or shiver.

Glancing behind him again, Evan realised that he had lost sight of Pietro altogether and felt his own legs stop completely. Searching through the sheets of icy rain, Evan turned right around and jogged back the way he had come, looking for Pietro in the chaos of the oncoming storm.

Giving up in trying to find him, he called loudly, “Pietro!”

There was no sign of the speedster: no tell-tale flash of silvery hair, no glint of sapphire blue eye, no shadowed smirk, nothing.

“PIETRO!” he yelled again, an edge of panic to his voice as he tried to figure out which direction he had even come from. Surrounding by blinding rain and rumbles of thunder, Evan could barely work out where the school was.

Then, the tiniest little whimper came from about ten feet from his left.

Hurrying in the direction of the noise, he yelped as he almost fell over a small shivering body wrapped tightly into itself on the ground.

“Pietro?” he gasped, kneeling down beside him.

Pietro’s shock of white hair was matted and his kit was soaked through. The skin that stretched over his angular joints and prominent bones was stark white; his eyes were shut and his mouth was parted ever so slightly.

His lips were blue at the edges.

“Holy fucking hell,” Evan cried, running both hands through his hair, terrified and unknowing as to what he should do. Then, when another shiver racked Pietro’s body, Evan reached down without another thought and hauled the light – _too light_ , he thought with worry- body into own drenched arms.

The little body in his arms curled instinctively into his heat as he hefted Pietro higher into his grip and started off at a clumsy jog in the direction he was sure he could see the dim outline of the school. It seemed like an eternity in the pounding rain as his legs burned like fire and his heart hammered his ribcage, but when he finally reached the overhanging where the coach was stood safely in the dry he collapsed against the wall with Pietro still in his arms.

“Sir,” he panted. “Sir, he collapsed. I have to take him to the nurse’s office _now_!”

“Right,” the coach stammered uncomfortably, “Of course. You, err, you go take him there now. I’ll call the rest of the boys in.”

For a moment, Evan wondered why the coach was between the two of them with a curious expression on his face, but then he remembered that everyone at Bayville had always known Pietro and Evan to loath each other and had never known them as the best friends they had once been.

Sprinting down the corridor, soaked to the skin, clutching Pietro tightly to his chest, Evan was lucky to only encounter one teaching assistant who simply darted out of the way when she saw him coming. The nurse’s office was right on the other side of the school and Evan tried to push every thought in his mind that wondered what would happen to Pietro if he didn’t get there in time.

With one final burst of energy, that he didn’t realise he possessed, Evan burst around the corner and straight into the nurse’s office.

“Nurse!” he yelled into the room, frantically looking around for a nurse of any kind. “NURSE!”

“Alright, alright,” she shushed, appearing from around a curtained bed. “Where’s the fire?” she snapped in annoyance. Then she spotted Pietro in Evan’s arms and the tense muscles in her face relaxed somewhat. “What happened?” she asked seriously, busying around an empty bed on the other side of the room.

“He-he just collapsed,” Evan stuttered, feeling overwhelmed as everything caught up to him. At the middle-aged woman’s request, he gingerly laid Pietro on the bed and winced when Pietro’s face contorted in pain.

“Do you know why?” she said, carefully peeling back his sports kit and fetching some towels from a cupboard.

Evan words caught in his throat and he anxiously chewed his lip for a half a second before he decided to tell her. “He…he hasn’t been eating lately,” he admitted in a quiet voice. “I mean, we don’t really talk any more, but this has happened before and he’s showing all the same signs. I don’t think I’ve seen him actually eat lunch at school for a while, and I know that he’s struggling to pay for food at home anyway. And he…well, he…” Evan closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, aware that the nurse was peering at him suspiciously. “He’s suffered from anorexia before,” he whispered, eyes still closed, “And I think he’s going through it again.”

He waited a long moment before opening his eyes to see the brunette looking at him with a softer expression on her face. “I know this must be hard for you,” she told him, resting her hand on top of his where it was gripping the side of the bed so hard his knuckles were whitening. “But you did the right thing in telling me. I think we just need to warm him up, get some food down him and he should be OK. For now.” She disappeared around a curtain and came back with a tray of food and fresh towels which she handed to Evan. “Anorexia is a dangerous illness which could kill him. You say that he’s suffered from it before. Did you help him to get over it?”

Evan nodded slowly, stripping himself of his sodden t-shirt and wrapping a dry towel over his shoulders as he moved around the other side of the bed and took Pietro’s frail, icy hand in his own. “Yeah, but it was a while ago,” he replied honestly, “and I don’t remember how we did it.”

“I see,” she nodded. “What’s his name?”

“Pietro,” Evan told her, “Maximoff.”

“And yours?”

“Evan Daniels.”

One of her eyebrows rose. “Daniels and Maximoff? And you…brought him in when he collapsed?” she questioned, without wanting an answer. “I’ve been told stories about the two of you. Rivals since the day you were born is what’s going around here.”

Scoffing, Evan shook his head and mumbled, “No. We used to be real close friends. But we, umm, we fell in with some different people and kinda fell apart ourselves.”

“Right,” she said. “Well, I’ll let your teachers know he’s here, but you should probably go and get changed and have a hot shower.”

Evan’s eyes widened and he felt a rush of fear go through him. “I can’t leave him,” he blurted uncontrollably, “I’m not leaving him. Not after all of this, not after how I could have stopped this from happening if I’d noticed the signs earlier. Please, you don’t understand. This is _my_ fault.”

“There is one thing I can assure you, Mr Daniels,” the older nurse told Evan firmly, reaching down to take Pietro’s temperature with the back of her hand and adding another towel to the bundle consuming him already, “And that is, that none of this is your fault. What is your fault is that this boy isn’t still lying unconscious on the ground outside in the pouring rain and freezing cold. It’s your fault that he’s indoors and warm and being seen to. It’s your fault that he’s going to get a full meal before he’s allowed to leave this room.” She gave him a small smile. “So don’t be too hard on yourself.”

With that, she ushered him out of the room and closed the door behind him.

* * *

Evan was surprised to see Pietro at lunch that afternoon.

He was even more surprised when the silvery blond cornered him on his way to the X-Men’s table with an angry curl to his lips.

“What the hell are you playing at, Daniels?!” he shouted, jabbing a finger at Evan’s chest.

Taking a shocked step backwards, Evan stammered, “W-what are you talking about?”

Pietro swallowed hard and Evan could the see the muscles in his throat working through the thin layer of skin. The blond in front of him inhaled deeply and Evan realised that he was trying not to cry. After having known Pietro since he was learning how to find his own feet, Evan could always tell what the other was feeling, and he sure as hell recognised the stifled sniffles and the way those sapphire irises flickered to his feet uncomfortably as though willing them to dutifully carry him out of the situation without conscious thought.

“You know what I’m fucking talking about, Evan,” he whispered, his voice husk and hoarse as he flicked his eyes back up to lock with Evan’s. “Why did you do that? You should have left me there. I’m no use to anyone. I’m worthless. Why didn’t you just leave me out there?”

Evan could hardly believe the words that were coming out of Pietro’s mouth, but he had heard similar before and knew that he had guessed the signals right.

“Pietro,” he murmured, stepping forward after carefully balancing his tray of food on an empty table to his right. “You’re not worthless, you mean everything to me. I thought you knew that?”

They were almost the exact same words he had replied to Pietro two years ago when he had first admitted that he felt worthless and could never do anything right, and Evan had said them without even thinking.

Pietro’s head snapped up and he glowered at Evan as he realised just how much the dark-skinned male had guessed.

“Yeah, sure,” he spat disdainfully. “Nobody fucking cares about me. Nobody gives a fucking damn! If my own father used me and abandoned me, then why should anyone else care!” he cried, spinning on his heel and all but racing out of the cafeteria.

Evan stood motionless, paralysed by Pietro’s words. Everyone in the cafeteria had turned to watch the exchange and a deathly hush had engulfed all of them.

Feeling tears prick his eyes, Evan turned and followed Pietro’s speedy route out of the hall without stopping to assure Kitty or Kurt or Scott or anyone that everything was OK.

Outside the cafeteria, he heard a sudden crescendo of cacophonic noise erupt as everybody discussed the unexplainable exchange between Evan and his nemesis Pietro. A soft sob made him turn around and he spied Pietro trying to clumsily open his locker with fumbling fingers. There were glistening tears streaming down his pale cheeks and he was biting down on his lip with an expression of shame- of course, Evan remembered, crying had always been a weakness in Magneto’s eyes and he had passed the philosophy down to his son.

Cautiously, Evan approached Pietro’s quivering figure and placed a ginger hand on his shoulder. At once, the speed demon spun around and fixed the other blond with a dark look.

“What do you want?” he growled.

“I remembered,” Evan replied, voice barely a breath.

Pietro frowned and wiped his face haphazardly. “Remembered what?”

Taking another step forward, Evan took Pietro’s hands in his own and held them tightly between their chests. “I remembered how we got over – _this-_ last time,” he murmured, bending his head close to the other’s.

“How?” Pietro breathed, eyes ghosted over as he felt Evan’s warm breath on his lips.

“Together.”

Evan pressed his lips to the speedster’s and slid a hand down to hold his waist. Licking his way into Pietro’s mouth, he felt one of the other blond’s hands tangle itself into Evan’s curly golden locks and he sighed into the kiss.

In a quick movement, Pietro had pushed Evan against the lockers and plundered his mouth with his tongue, mapping out familiar but old territory. Evan groaned when the silvery blond rolled his hips against Evan’s and subsequently their crotches; a hiss escaped his lips when he felt the coil of arousal tighten and grow in his stomach.

When they broke apart, they were both panting but were wearing identical grins.

“We can totally beat this,” Evan told Pietro firmly, caressing his side through his soft t-shirt.

Pietro smirked and leant close to Evan’s as he muttered, “Ooh, sounds like a challenge.”


End file.
